Glob (e) Scape

the II Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

‘Qui Vive? / Qui Vive?

04 July – 08 August

In the summer of 2010 ae.i.ou participated in the II Moscow International Biennale for Young Art in Russia where the series PR Post Montage represented Puerto Rico in the GLOB(E)SCAPE exhibit at the Artplay Design center.  The curator Daria Pyrkina, points out that  “the exhibition Glob(E)Scape is devoted to the Earth’s modern global landscape and the problems faced by the inhabitants of modern megacities and global villages.”

The project’s title is based on a play of words. On the one hand, the curator invited an international group of painters from all corners of the world (the artists come from four continents) to create a sort of global landscape or “globescape.” On the other, the highlighted mute E in this word flowing into “escape” suggests the striving to break out of the limits of the globalized world and avoid the unification and standardization that accompany today’s integrative processes, whose feebleness is becoming increasingly clear with the augmentation of centrifugal forces.

The exhibit can be conditionally divided into several thematic groups. One of the largest groups is utopian planning in the broadest sense of the term: from overtly social projects that strive to restructure reality (be it only a small part) through art to formalist or even abstract ephemeral constructions that problematize the visible and the imaginable. A number of works in the exhibit are based on a play on what is directly visible to the eye and what is hidden and often seen only in the mind’s eye. Another important group is works that, in one way or another, study the city landscape, the psychogeography of the modern megalopolis, and its communal life. Another group that is directly connected to the preceding one looks at the “underside” of the modern post-industrial civilization, its material world, and different life stages of the objects that it produces. It includes, in particular, works with traditional anti-consumer themes. A large group of works is devoted to different aspects of political life from military conflicts and terrorist attacks to protests by activists that have become increasingly prominent in recent years. The problem of government as such and of the holders, legitimacy, and symbolism of power interests many artists. Some of them study the phenomenon of historical memory in a world that is rapidly taking on new geopolitical forms. Finally, a sizeable group of works directly problematizes the phenomenon of the boundary – the official theme of this year’s Biennale.

The project’s numerous thematic groups and subgroups are impressions gathered from the observation of the life of today’s society and work together to create a single image. The main aim of the Glob(E)Scape exhibit is to study surrounding reality in different ways in order to identify problem areas and painful spots and create a global world (artistic) landscape that would be as complete as possible.